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At your next meeting, start off with something different. Go around the room, and ask each member to share something for which they are thankful. Whether it's a friendship in the room, something your group has achieved this year, something in their personal life, the approach of basketball season, whatever.
Have your officers go first to set the tone. Sure, there will be a couple of sarcastic, maybe even inappropriate answers as you go around the room, but that's OK. The idea is to focus on the good stuff your members get from being a part of your organization.
If people don't know what to say, they can simply be thankful for being a member, or being alive, or for the opportunity to attend college, or for our men and women serving overseas. Let people know that they can be as personal as they want to be, or not personal at all.
Want to make it even better? After going around the room, have everyone write the thing they are thankful for on an index card, and then post those cards somewhere visible. If your group is a housed fraternity or sorority, post them by the front door. If you're a student government, post them in the student activities office. Athletic teams might post them in the locker room, or perhaps post their own card on the outside of their locker. If you're a student life staff member, post them in your break area or on your office doors. Keep that positive energy of thanks and appreciation going.
Today, our intern, Ryan, took a bulletin board and cut out a bunch of turkeys, putting the name of a staff member on each one. He then distributed five paper "feathers" to each staff member and asked them to write something they were thankful for on each feather. Staff members are busy right now putting their feathers on their birds. It was a really nice way to end our week here.
Sometimes, we get so bogged down by the challenges in our organization or in our workplace that we forget to note the simple things that make being in college and being a student leader wonderful. Give your members the opportunity to express what your organization means to them, and how the relationships they make there affect them.
